Flint drinking water crisis rattles Congress

Partisan anger over the Flint, Michigan, water crisis flared in Congress on Wednesday - spawning finger-pointing at a House hearing while threatening to scuttle a wide-ranging Senate energy bill.

Lawmakers of both parties clashed over blame for the crisis during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, as Republicans tore into President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency for failing to alert the public for months about lead contamination in the city's drinking water. In turn, Democrats battered the administration of GOP Gov. Rick Snyder - and by extension the Republican Party's anti-regulation approach to governing.

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"This is the consequence of putting ideology ahead of human beings and their needs and their welfare," said Democratic firebrand Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia. "The difference in political philosophy matters. I do accuse. I do lay this at the doorstep of those who hold that philosophy."

To Republicans, the issue was the latest example of EPA failing in its job, and they pointed to the departure of the agency's top Midwest official last month over the crisis.

"We've had something festering at the EPA for a long period of time, and often where there's smoke there's a bigger fire," committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said. "It's important for the EPA to tell the public that they're poisoning their kids if they drink the water - why didn't they do it? ... Why did it take a year?"

Across the Capitol in the Senate, Michigan Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters led a Democratic push to use a broad, bipartisan energy bill to provide at least $300 million to help Flint address the water contamination. But despite a tentative deal with Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), most Republicans balked at the spending, and the energy bill that was passed out of committee last summer suddenly seemed on the verge of collapse.

"You know what, I gotta have help for [Flint]," Stabenow said. "You can't build and rebuild pipes out of smoke and mirrors."

Murkowski held out hope the Senate could still reach a deal on aid for Flint and salvage the energy bill. "What we're trying to do is figure out ... how you can allow for a fix and do so in a way that will not jeopardize the bill. It's as simple as that," she told reporters.

Flint also intruded into the presidential race. Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders agreed Wednesday to hold one of their two newly announced debates in the city on March 6, guaranteeing that the crisis will remain in the political spotlight.

But the focal point of Wednesday's squabbling was the nearly four-hour House hearing, which was punctuated with applause, groans and sobbing from an audience of Michiganders clad in "Flint Lives Matter" T-shirts who brought along bottles of dirty drinking water for the cameras.

Even as some Democrats thanked Chaffetz for holding it, others derided the hearing as a media stunt - noting that Snyder, who has faced calls for his resignation, was conspicuously absent from Chaffetz's witness list. Also absent was the former head of the state's Department of Environmental Quality, who resigned under pressure.

Democrats noted that it was Snyder's hand-picked emergency manager who, in the name of saving money, had orchestrated the fateful switch of drinking water sources for the hard-hit city's 100,000 residents - from Lake Huron to the notoriously polluted Flint River. And it was Snyder's Department of Environmental Quality that failed to heed drinking water regulations that would have prevented the water from corroding old lead pipes and fixtures.

"How crazy is that? How interested are we really in getting to the facts when they bring here witnesses who don't know what went on?" Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) said during his questioning of Keith Creagh, who took over as director of the Michigan DEQ only last month.

Chaffetz said the hearing was only the start of his panel's investigation of the issue, but he intended to focus on the EPA because Congress primarily has jurisdiction over federal agencies. Still, he will aggressive pursue testimony from at least one state player: Darnell Earley, the former Flint emergency manager appointed by Snyder. Earley declined an invitation to testify at the hearing, and his lawyer refused a subpoena from the committee.

"We're calling on the U.S. marshals to hunt him down and give him that subpoena," Chaffetz said. Earley stepped down from his post as emergency manager for Detroit's schools this week.

Democrats argued that the Republicans' focus on EPA and local officials was a bid to deflect responsibility from Snyder and GOP appointees.

"There's an effort to sort of obfuscate and shift responsibility - I mean, it's a public relations campaign," Rep. Dan Kildee, the Democrat who represents Flint, told reporters after testifying before the panel.

After Chaffetz declined their request to bring Snyder before the panel, the committee's Democrats formally demanded their own set of hearings on Flint crisis.

"I'm not protecting anybody because that's not our job," said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee. "We are the last line of defense and if we don't do it nobody's going to do it."